Impeachment, silly laws, 9-11

Demands for impeachment begin shortly after inauguration day and continue unabated thereafter. Presidents are forced to make numerous decisions, some of which are bound to anger some people, who become apoplectic and want to throw the rascal out.

Demands for impeachment begin shortly after inauguration day and continue unabated thereafter. Presidents are forced to make numerous decisions, some of which are bound to anger some people, who become apoplectic and want to throw the rascal out.

Fortunately, only two presidents have been impeached. However, these findings were overturned by the Senate, and both presidents served out the remainder of their terms.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt was a magnet for impeachment threats. He played fast and loose with the Constitution, ignoring Congress as much as possible, while he tried desperately to end the Great Depression and then prepare America for war.

He was a master politician (“I love a good fight”) and treated every attack as an opportunity to ridicule the accusers. Those who dared to confront him became the butt of his jokes, and audiences roared with laughter.

President Barack Obama will, more than likely, complete his term in office, and future historians will assess the value of his service besides being the “first.” A new president will be inaugurated in January 2017, and impeachment demands will soon follow.

No president has served without criticism, starting with George Washington, and none will.

Kenneth Lee

RaytownPassing silly laws

America believes that passing laws will solve our problems. Many times we get nothing more than a warm and fuzzy solution that makes us believe we are solving the problem.

We want to ban abortions, but we definitely can’t give women a handout such as pre- and post-natal care. That’s the government interfering with our private lives.

Children are gunned down in the streets of Kansas City, and one side wants strict gun laws while the other wants to arm everyone. It is not looking at the underlying problems and attempting to find solutions.

Until America wants to peer under the veneer of our society and really solve problems, we’ll continue to wander aimlessly and pass laws that don’t work.

David Hooper

Kansas CityKC 9-11 memorial

I think our beautiful city should have its own 9-11 memorial.

Lynn Towse

Kansas CityPrize not earned

President Barrack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for what he might do in the future. The future is here, and President Obama has created anything but a peaceful world.

All of our Middle Eastern embassies were closed earlier this month. Our European allies are mad at us for spying on them. China is engaging America in a cyber war, and Obama won’t talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin. We are using drones to attack our enemies, and the collateral damage is creating jihadists.

I am not sure how much worse it could get. I don’t even want to talk about the feelings created by our government spying on us.

The GOP again has threatened to shut down the government. Republican lawmakers should watch Monty Python’s 1979 movie, “Life of Brian,” which mocks people who hate the government but won’t give up any services government provides.

Here’s a much-condensed excerpt, in which protesters plan to demand that Pontius Pilate “dismantle the entire apparatus of the Roman Imperialist State”:

Leader: “They’ve bled us white. … They’ve taken everything we had. … And what have they ever given us in return?”

The leader responds: “All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”

They’re like today’s tea partiers who carry signs saying, “Don’t touch my Medicare.” Others complain about cuts to White House tours, national parks, veterans benefits and other government services and programs.

After the sequester, the Senate unanimously approved a measure to keep their flights from being delayed. No one wants his own benefits cut.

Susan Pepperdine

FairwayBreasts, Kansas

Phillip Cosby is a guy really bothered by breasts, so bothered he has come all the way from Salina, Kan., to protect Kansas City area children (9-21, C1, “Breasts: The new American danger?”). This control freak with the problem would be funny if he weren’t costing us money.

We need to know the extent of his personal problems. Does he want nursing babies to be blindfolded? Both boys and girls?

Should only boys be protected from seeing this art at the Overland Park Arboretum? Should girls be protected also, so they won’t realize the badness of their bodies?

Does Cosby want girls to wear burkas? Even while they bathe?

Unfortunately, it’s only a matter of time before the mainstream media see this. Other states have laughed at Kansas before, but this time other countries will, too.

Anthropomorphism reigns supreme. That animal would be fair game (pun intended) the minute it stepped out of its artificial environment.

So someone shot a deer out of season. Fine him and get back to a real life.

I wonder how long it was dead before being discovered. If it had been fresh, it could have been donated to one of the food pantries.

No, I have never owned a gun or bow, and I have never been hunting in my life.

Arthur W. Elkins

BeltonLivestock production

I see visions of an idyllic family farm with animals free to roam. But this is fantasy.

Farms are run like an industrial enterprise, where animals are packed into enclosures in large buildings where they are fed and they defecate until they gain enough weight to be shipped to slaughter.

Antibiotics are given to keep them from getting sick.

A big problem arises from this practice: antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Mark Bittman of The New York Times says raising animals in confinement while feeding them antibiotics “breeds varieties of bacteria that cause disease in humans, which may not readily be treated by antibiotics.”

There has been an epidemic caused by a staphylococcus, which is antibiotic-resistant, in which deaths and hospitalizations have occurred. Campylobacter, an antibiotic-resistant bacteria, is in half the chicken sold.

It’s time to change how we produce the livestock we eat.

Mary Helen Korbelik

Mission HillsBackground checks

Immediately after the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings Dec. 14 in Newtown, Conn., I didn’t know what to think about gun control.

So, I read articles and studied the social-science research.

I learned that although mass shootings get most of the attention, the deaths they cause are few compared with the thousands of Americans who are killed by gun violence every year.

Decades of well-controlled research shows clearly that the best solution is better enforcement of existing restrictions on who can buy guns.

Simply extending the background-check requirement to all sales would keep many guns out of the hands of criminals and save many lives every year.